


The Story

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Books, Depression, Gen, Growing Up, Injury, Psychological Trauma, Self-Discovery, away mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 05:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16402052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: Over the years, Philippa Georgiou periodically re-reads her favorite book.





	The Story

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of days ago I was doing headcanon/3-sentence fic prompts on Tumblr and onaperduamedee sent me "Philippa + books" (thank you)! This a) got longer than three sentences and b) I ended up happy enough with it that I decided to pop it up here as well :)

Philippa is ten years old, curled in a blanket in her secret hideaway in the hallway between the stairs and the attic closet, reading her favorite book. The flashlight’s warm light turns the yellowing pages gold, and she inhales the familiar story of love and adventure, good and evil, courage and hope, a smile on her lips as her eyes scan the words until her head droops to her chest and her fingers drop the book onto the blanket. Nestled in the quiet softness of midnight, Philippa Georgiou dreams of stories. **  
**

***

Philippa is twenty-one years old, tears drying on her cheeks as she pulls a familiar book from her childhood shelf, sitting on the floor to read the opening pages. The characters are different now; the hero’s companions impossibly young, the sections she’s always skimmed in the past surprisingly beautiful, and the pacing of the plot more uneven than she remembers. Stroking the crumbling edges of the pages, she continues reading, immersing herself once more in the epic tale of love and adventure, good and evil, courage and hope. The story is different now, and so is she, but it is still here, and so is she, and as she reads the familiar words, she feels a part of herself come home.

***

Philippa is thirty-three years old, staring blankly at the bulkhead across from her bed as the clock hits oh-three hundred hours and she tries to sleep. Abruptly, she remembers the box of old papers and books stored beneath her bed, and seconds later she is pulling it open, digging out a familiar novel and opening it eagerly to the first page, waiting to once again be wrapped in the excitement of the story, the familiarity of the words, and the warmth of the prose. 

But though the story scrawls across the pages as it always has, it is as though Philippa is reading it from across a great, cold distance. How could the author build a story around love when love only leads to loss? Why weave stories of adventure when real adventure only comes through necessity and pain? It seems laughable and saccharine to paint a conflict between good and evil when what the heroes might define as evil is simply the natural, uncaring state of so much of the universe. The heroes’ courage seems useless in the face of such a truth, and hope feels most distant of all, no more than a word stamped in fading ink on a crumbling page. 

Dropping the book to the ground, Philippa sinks back to her bed, and when she sleeps, her dreams are cold and empty, taunting her with the absence of the stories that have abandoned her.

***

Philippa is forty-one years old, trying to distract an injured ensign from their pain as they wait for a rescue that may not come and damp darkness presses in all around them. Slowly, she begins retelling the epic story that she knows as well as she knows her own heart, describing the scenery and doing all the voices of the tale she has lived her way once more into loving, pouring all she knows and all she is into a living story of love and adventure, good and evil, courage and hope.

***

Philippa is fifty-two years old, and as she sits in her ready room on the Shenzhou, her eye catches the worn spine of a familiar book sitting in the display case above the conference table shelf. Sometimes it still hits her, during the odd quiet moment, how far her life has diverged from anything close to any kind of life she expected she might lead, years ago and lightyears away, at the age she was the first dozen times she read that book. In the years since, her own story has scrolled along, some chapters impossibly dark, others surprisingly beautiful, and the pacing of the plot really outstandingly uneven. As she crosses the room to gently lift the book from its case, Philippa knows that no one else in the universe will ever know either this story or her own in quite the same way that she does, everything hinging on the shifting, living definitions of love and adventure, good and evil, courage and hope. 

Smiling as she sits back at her desk, Philippa Georgiou opens the book to the first page and begins to read.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone's wondering, I don't have a specific book in mind for Philippa's favorite book, but I imagine that it's a YA novel somewhere in the fantasty, sci fi, adventure, or related genres, a la Harry Potter or The Hobbit or A Wrinkle in Time or one of their 23rd century counterparts.


End file.
